


With Yesterday's You

by doublelead



Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: Canon Compliant, Childhood Memories, Festivals, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-26
Updated: 2017-09-26
Packaged: 2019-01-05 17:30:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,617
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12194457
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/doublelead/pseuds/doublelead
Summary: “Gladio,” Noctis starts. He doesn’t remember his voice being this soft either, but he feels like he’s barely starting to wake, dazed just a moment before, gathering his breath as blurred noise clears from his periphery. “What day is it today?”“What are you talking about? You’re the one who said you wanted to go today.” He hears Gladiolus’s smile, fond, behind the exasperated sigh. “August fifth. The first day of the Skyfish Festival.”





	With Yesterday's You

**Author's Note:**

  * For [whippy](https://archiveofourown.org/users/whippy/gifts).



> A birthday gift for [Whippy](http://whipbogard.tumblr.com/)!!!!! I'm sorry I have no idea if this is a thing you'd actually like or not but awawawa /slides present across the table I hope it is at least a thing!! A messy, convoluted, pretentious thing, but a thing nonetheless. 
> 
> BUT YEAH HAPPY BIRTHDAY BUT ALSO HAPPY GLADNOCTS TO YOU

A hand catches him around the wrist before he loses himself in the crowd. Noctis looks back, squints past wavering lights, paper lanterns rocking from a line of string in the wind.

“There you are.” Gladiolus’ voice is a little lighter than he expects it to be. He thinks it must be because the way he’s breathing hard – his shoulders heaving, eyes wide and visibly a little bit more than frazzled.

Noctis takes in the slow ebb and flow of people walking past, around him, behind Gladiolus. He turns his head to the side, to the food stalls lining the side of the road, red caramel apples catching the warm orange glow of the night, then upwards, to where he traces the faint line of the crystal powering the wall.

His heart aches with longing, as he watches the prismatic glint reflecting off the side of the citadel towers.

“I thought I told you not to wander off on your own.”

He looks back down, to where Gladiolus still holds tightly on to him, out of focus over the black canvas of his shoes.

“Gladio,” Noctis starts. He doesn’t remember his voice being this soft either, but he feels like he’s barely at the edge of waking, dazed just a moment before, gathering his breath as blurred noise clears from his periphery. “What day is it today?”

“What are you talking about? You’re the one who said you wanted to go today.” He hears a hint of a chuckle, behind the exasperated sigh. “August fifth. The first day of the Skyfish Festival.”

 

* * *

 

The first firework of the night cuts through the air, whistles across the sky before the silence that follows. Noctis counts, off-beat, until sparks light and scatter, blooming through a cloud of smoke.

“Do you think the festival’s going to be called off today?”

His raincoat clings to his skin, sweat from the muggy summer shower as he waits by the pedestrian crossing for light to turn green. The neighbourhood surrounding Gladiolus’ house is quiet, hardly even a car passing through the streets within the minutes he has been standing there.

A drop of water slides down the tip of his umbrella, catches at the end of a strand of his fringe curling out, falls onto a puddle next to red-chequered rain boots. They’re Gladiolus’, he remembers off-hand, practically shoved at him by the older boy before they went out. He thinks he should be a little bit more than put out, that his shoe size right now is Gladiolus’ when he was about thirteen.

“Beats me,” Gladiolus replies. He adjusts his hold on the grocery bag he cradles to his side, idly twirls the umbrella in his other hand. He smiles, cheeky, teasing, when he looks down at Noctis. “What? I can’t change the weather for you, Your Highness.”

“I know that!” Noctis couldn’t stop himself from pouting, and Gladiolus laughs. “I just really wanted to go.”

“Iris did too.” Warmth settles around Noctis’ chest, as Gladio falls into step next to him, laughter dying down with their umbrellas knocking together, water dripping into the space between them. Gladiolus’ voice is quiet next to him. Noctis tries to look up, from the skin of Gladiolus’ shoulder, almost visible under the soaked white of his shirt. “Tell you what: Jared’s going to make cookies out of these. Hopefully the rain’ll let up by then and we can take the cookies to watch the fireworks.”

 

* * *

 

He lets his knife hover over the bar of chocolate he’s supposed to be cutting, watches his knuckles tighten with his grip, then loosen as he sets the knife down. White bandages wrapped around his fingers, from the tips and down halfway his palm. He can’t remember if they had been there before, in the morning when he buttons his shirt in the mirror, just now sifting flour through a sieve. It can’t have been a recent injury; he doesn’t feel the sting of a fresh cut wound, doesn’t smell the antiseptic swab under the bloodstains he doesn’t see seeping through the cloth.

He didn’t hurt himself in the kitchen, then.

“Hey, Gladio.” His voice is quiet, just above the bustle of Jared and Iris pattering around by the stove behind him.

Gladiolus hums in reply, from across the counter.

“Do you know where I got this from?”

"What, did that kid hit you harder than you thought?" He doesn’t look up from chopping his share of the chocolate, slides stray pieces away from the side of the blade back onto the cutting board with his fingers. "Last week. Some jackass third year said some shit about Prompto. He tried to break your arm, but you broke his nose first."

Noctis tilts his head, when Gladiolus looks around – a theatrical flit of his eyes left and right – before bending down to cup a hand around his lips. “Oh, and, uh, as far as Iggy is concerned, I don’t condone violence, by the way.” His grin says otherwise, in the way he straightens up, arms crossed over his chest, looking like every possible shade possible of a proud older brother.

"Huhh..." Noctis murmurs, turns his hand palm up, flexes his wrist. He vaguely remembers something like that. It felt like it had happened longer than a week ago, though.

He shrugs, picks his knife up again and starts cutting, rhythmic taps against the cutting board over the sound of soft bubbling, water boiling in a pot for a bain-marie.

 

* * *

 

Time ticks, minutes stretching into hours, a swing of the large wooden clock’s pendulum for each second the rain is not letting up, high on the corner wall of the Amicitia home library. Noctis blows a stray piece of hair away from his face as he scrunches his nose in utmost concentration. Raindrops dot at the windows, rapping at his already waning attention span, and this – this needed a whole new level of godly focus.

The star atop of a tree – a halved piece of eraser, is to stand majestically on a tower as tall as Gladiolus’ arm is long, only if he _just –_

“ _Nooooo,”_ he whines, pure vocalised despair accompanying the heart-shattering rivulets of pen and pencils toppling down two pencil cases.

“Heh,” Gladiolus snorts from behind his book. He doesn’t look up, doesn’t raise his head from where he propped his cheek on a loose fist, and yet, somehow, Noctis feels the sheer force of his mirth.

“Shut up,” Noctis mumbles, his ears burning red.

Gladiolus shrugs, an easy roll of his shoulders, and flips to the next page. “Look, I know you’re upset the festival’s cancelled for the day, but don’t take it out on my stationery.”

Noctis ducks a little, peers under Gladiolus’ book to read the title on the cover. Squinting at the block letters, he scrunches his nose. “Don’t you have something a little less boring?"

“Oh, huh.” He flips the cover over. “What? You want me to read something to you?”

“Yeah!” Noctis perks up, scrambling to lean across the table. He bounces on his feet in excitement, rocks his upper body from side to side. “And because it’s the right season for it, the one about the Skyfish!"

Gladiolus clicks his tongue, lets his chair drag loudly across the floor as he stands up, mutters all the way to the bookshelf behind him. “Didn’t know I was babysitting a literal child.”

Noctis grins wide. “Don’t be like that. It’s a classic. You like classic literature.”

“It’s also a children’s book. You’re way past that reading level.” Gladiolus ghosts his finger across a row of books, down along the spine then up another shelf. He stops, for a while. Drumming his fingers on the side of his chin, he hums, tilts his head sideways. “That’s odd.”

“What's wrong?”

“No it’s– I could have sworn...” Shaking his head, Gladiolus turns back to smile at Noctis. “Sorry, kiddo. Looks like Iris took the book with her somewhere.”

Noctis visibly deflates, sitting back down and oozes like he’s in liquid state onto the table, his cheek squished against the cold wooden surface. He stays quiet for the rest of the afternoon, half-heartedly tries to rebuilt his stationery stack, arranges it instead into a rough picture he doesn’t quite remember any more. Pencils and rulers lined together into the Bridge of Fireflies, one half of an eraser as the planet Exa Pieco, a pen cap down on the bottom left corner that he moves in lazy curves across the table top, a carp swimming through the galaxy.

 

* * *

 

‘ _We should–’_

‘ _I’m not leav–’_

‘ _He’s not–’_

‘ _I know that! I’m just–’_

 

* * *

 

“—trying to figure out what this empty lot used to be.”

Noctis peers over Gladiolus’ shoulder, where he crouches down to read a sign hammered onto the ground near the pavement. He hoists himself up further, pushing down on Gladiolus’ back as leverage. The sleeves of his borrowed parka bunches around his knuckles, and he tries not to think about how small he feels in Gladiolus’ clothes, or how little he seems to give under his weight. Ignis had asked the night before, if he had wanted a change of clothes delivered to the Amicitia House for the few nights he was as going to stay over for the festival. Noctis starts to wonder if that would have been better, the absence of an ever-present conscious thought, Gladiolus’ presence in the hem that reaches nearly halfway down his thighs, the honey and vanilla scented detergent Jared always uses.

He hadn’t realised that he had tensed his jaw, breathes slow, steady, in an attempt to relax. He feels warm, safe under the constant tug of anxiety he can’t quite place.

It’s odd, how he finds that he has to keep reminding himself that he’s not alone and drowning.

The heat must’ve gotten to him. He scratches at his neck, skims the tips of his fingers over his pulse. He’s fine. He’s okay.

“Was this not here before?” Noctis asks.

“Not that I could remember. I could have sworn it was a–” Gladiolus pauses, pursing his lips. “...Huh?”

Noctis thinks of wind-swept hair, the flutter of Gladiolus’ jacket collar as he sits behind him, his knees locked tight in more parts fear than he would like to admit, hand pushing his helmet back up from falling into his eyes. It shouldn’t be that easy to forget what the empty lot was – they’ve passed this street on their bike ride home countless times before.

Gladiolus looks back at him from over his shoulder, eyebrows furrowed together. “What bike?”

“Don’t… you have a bike?” He remembers heavy riding boots against the concrete road, Gladious’ kicking the kickstand in one motion as he vaults his legs over to straddle a beige-coloured vintage vespa. The sound of Gladiolus’ keys clinking together, the thrum of the engine starting, comes with the image of an empty space behind him, the way the dark brown leather cover of the seat clings onto Noctis’ uniform pants on hot summer days.

“No…?” Noctis stumbles back a few steps as Gladiolus stands. He doesn’t look at him, busies himself brushing the dirt off his trousers, hiding the worry Noctis knows he takes care not to show too often. His voice is quiet, a tone that almost sounds rehearsed in how he frames it as a casual question. “Are you okay, Noct? You’ve been a little spacey lately.”

“I’m okay,” Noctis says, slowly. “It’s just… _hmm…_ ”

“Let’s just head to the city square. You probably just need some sugar in your system.” Gladiolus sighs, fond. He takes Noctis’ hand and pulls him forward, a small smile on his face as he looks at him. “I’ll even pay for your first caramel apple! But every other food you tell me to fetch, comes with a proxy fee, okay?”

Noctis doesn’t know if it says more about him, or about Gladiolus, when his hand hurts from slapping his bicep while Gladiolus’ laughter bubbles into giving himself stitches.

 

* * *

 

“Did you say something?” Noctis pulls his hands away from his ears. He hears a child wail, lost somewhere in the crowd, probably from the loud blasts of the fireworks setting off.

“No? Sure you aren’t hearing things?” Gladiolus furrows his brows, his lips pursed together. “Sorry, it was really loud just now. Can’t blame you if you thought you heard something.”

“That… makes sense.” _There wasn’t a reason for Gladiolus to– He was right here–_

‘ _I’m sorry.’_

“It’s fine,” Noctis says, without meaning to, his voice clotted and heavy, muffled in his own ears.

“Yeah…” Gladiolus says, slowly, levelling him with an odd look. He lets a beat pass between them, steals a glance back towards the food stalls. “Stay put, okay? I’ll be back with shaved ice before the second showing.”

 

* * *

 

 

“My apologies, Your Highness, it seems that I can’t quite recall,” was Jared’s answer to a question he doesn’t remember asking.

Noctis watches him hoist a sleeping Iris up his back, adjusting his grip so that she doesn’t fall. His age is starting to show, and Noctis feels a little wistful, a tiny pang of melancholy at the soft smile Jared directs down at his shoes, quiet as he gives himself time to think.

“The building had been torn down for weeks. Lady Iris and Young Master Gladio had quickly taken to a cat that lives there, now.”

That doesn’t quite align with his own memories – _the stray cat that Gladiolus picked up lives in the–_

He tries to think back to the place where they usually hung out, tucked in a corner after school with a bag of cat toys and canned cat food, finds instead a dark scribble of the image, black static filtering through his mind’s eye.

‘ _Huh,’_ he thinks. ‘ _That’s weird...’_

 

* * *

 

“Snowy, right?” Noctis asks the next day, blowing through a bite of piping hot dumplings in his mouth.

“What? Also manners, Noct. Goddamn, did Iggy not drill that into you enough?” Gladiolus stretches the sleeve of his shirt over the heel of his palm, wipes a stray speck of food stuck to the side of Noctis’ face. “ _Blegh._ ”

He scrunches his face, tries to inch his nose and mouth away from Gladiolus deliberately dabbing away at his face with a force that was wholly uncalled for. “The cat. The one stray that you’re taking care of. White, looks like she’s wearing grey socks.”

“Oh, you mean Sweet Pea? Did Jared tell you about her? I was just thinking of letting you visit tomorrow.”

_Wait–_

_He hasn’t–?_

 

* * *

 

The sound of his rubber band gun overlaps with the night’s first spark. He feels a little cheated, that he actually hits the target this time, distracted by the sudden burst of light, blue at the tips, trailing into wisps, picking at the outlines along the stand canopy, off stray strands of his hair and down his shoulders. The old man manning the counter hands him the giant cactuar plush he won, and Noctis hobbles back to where Gladiolus is waiting for him.

He stands a step behind him, takes a moment to watch Gladiolus’ back, the way he tilts his head up, quiet as he looks up to the sky, fireworks casting stained glasswork shadows on the side of his face. His gaze stops, at Gladiolus’ nape, where the ends of his hair falls shorter than where Noctis expects it to, a peek of exposed skin he isn’t quite used to seeing.

“It’s odd, you’d think right in the middle of the festival would be the worst place to see the fireworks.” Noctis says, a little too much to himself. He doesn’t look at Gladiolus, but at a point in the distance behind the light. His grip slacks, the slightest bit, around the cactuar plush.

“Did you forget? They always set the fireworks some ways away around the perimeter of the festival.” Gladiolus says, just as distant. “It’s so the lanterns can simulate the rift between the Koi and the Bridge of Fireflies.”

They don’t say anything, for a while after that. Noctis looks down at their feet, shadows in the space between them, a gap that feels a world and a half wider than it actually is.

 

* * *

 

The last of the smoke clouds clear from the sky, after a light shower. Hushed whispers buzzing into crowded murmurs, white noise and whimsy woodwinds melding together as the festival continues. Noctis looks down at Gladiolus’ hand, a hitch in his breath. He feels a light-headed and a little dazed, an itch in his fingers he definitely does not feel, urging him to reach out _and–_

He scrunches his nose. “Who brings _a book_ to a festival?”

“I just bought it at that used book stall right there, just in case you’re going to spend like two hours and five hundred lucre winning something for Iris.” Gladiolus looks down at the cactuar Noctis hugs to himself, and then up again before adding, “Which apparently you went and done diddly did.”

“Love is five hundred lucre,” Noctis huffs.

“I’ll tell Iris that she’s only worth so much.” Gladiolus pauses, lets his grin stretch wide. “And that you were actually hoping to one shot it for ten lucre.”

“ _That’s not what I–_ you’re not really going to tell her that, are you?”

“Nah.” Noctis bristles, at the hand ruffling through his hair, forces down a smile that he can’t quite hide against the back of the plush. “It’s getting late though. You got your prize, want to call it a day?”

 

* * *

 

“The empty lot used to be a second-hand item store.”

Noctis looks at Gladiolus, through dark strands of his fringe, bleary-eyed between blinks of sleep. He rubs his cheek against his pillow, clutching at the tail of a dream that starts to slip away, frayed at the strands.

He hears a soft rustle, followed by creaking from the old spring mattress originally laid out for him on the ground beside Gladiolus’ bed. “Think about it, the Skyfish book I lost was probably something I bought there.”

There’s a dip in the covers next to him, Gladiolus moving to lean his cheek on his arms folded over Noctis’ blanket. “It was in the book I bought at the festival earlier, an SF about dimensional slips.”

He feels a phantom pull, in the air between his fingers, reaching for Gladiolus who right now, seems another world away, with Noctis at the edge of the universe. His voice is hard to grasp, a hair’s breadth too far, somewhere a little further from the tips of his nails.

“Since the building’s gone, everything connected to it is gone– memories, too.”

It’s hard to breathe, suddenly. A millisecond flare of purple fractals, nausea tiding over and disappearing just as fast. He swallows down the weight pressing down on his chest, tries not to think about his hand outstretched in front of him and tearing him forward, the strain in muscles more defined than the ones he sees right now, curled next to his face.

He wants to ask, if all the things he remembers wrong – the kitten under the porch beams of the shop, the beige vespa that Gladiolus instantly fell in with, parked by the entrance, rusty and dust-covered, a ‘For Sale’ sign hanging from one of the side mirrors – fell through and disappeared along with it.

“I mean, I probably just misplaced it. But it’s fun to think about.”

Noctis stops himself.

He feels a dull ache, at the heel of his palm, skin white around four shallow crescent shape indents.

 

* * *

 

 

The end of the festival comes with the end of a dream. Noctis wakes up in Gladiolus’ bed for the seventh time within the week. He looks to the side, at the window where dawn starts to break, peeking from the one centimetre gap between the windowsill and where blinds aren’t drawn fully closed. He toes at where sunlight falls onto the floor, cuts across an otherwise clear line where it’s still dark underneath his heels, shadows stretching far behind his back.

He watches the rhythmic rise and fall of Gladiolus’ breathing, asleep on his side and turned away from him, in a puddle of the morning. Noctis follows the light, lets himself fall, under the covers, fingers curled tight around the material of Gladiolus’ shirt.

“Noct?” Faint, barely tangible, Gladiolus’ voice is like air. “What’s wrong?”

“I don’t know.” He buries a staggered exhale between Gladiolus’ shoulder blades. “I suddenly felt like– _just let me–_ ”

 

* * *

 

‘ _You know as much as I do that I can’t just–’_

‘ _The nights are getting longer, Gladio, we can’t affor–’_

‘ _I’m staying. I’ll wait for him.’_

 

* * *

 

Noctis remembers quiet whispers, a tale of the night sky and a koi that swims across the milky way – Gladiolus’ voice fading into clouds as he toes into a dream, soft and cotton-like, far away. He remembers being cloaked under the covers of his blanket, faint torchlight brushing printed stars above their heads.

‘ _On a bridge of fireflies, the koi departs – across galaxies and over planets, in hopes that he’ll find his brother’s voice...”_

He remembers Gladiolus’ amused chuckle, his sentence trailing mid-way, a quiet thump of the book closing, and the torch switching off.

‘ _He sees him, behind a prismatic sunrise over Exa Pieco’s horizon–’_

Gladiolus’ fingers curl between his, wisps of his breath weaving in-between locks of his hair.

‘ _Goodnight, Your Highness._ ’

Noctis dreams of water ripples on the surface of the sky, starlight streaming and refracting, dancing down a blur of red and white – two kois gliding in tandem through space.

 

* * *

 

It’s dark, when he wakes up again, twenty years older and staring at worn, sword-calloused fingers, a dark, inky abyss under his feet.

 

 


End file.
